The point of self-driving cars should be non-driving people

[jasong]

I haven't checked the law here in Arkansas, so my mom might be talking out her butt, but...

According to her,"It's a shame you didn't keep your driver's license, because then you could benefit from the autonomous feature of self-driving cars." Anyone who thinks that sentence makes sense doesn't have the ability to think logically. If it's autonomous, it doesn't need outside help. Now, I understand about gas and repairs and all that, but even human drivers need outside help with that on occasion.

Her other argument was,"If it breaks, you need to be able to drive it off the road." Um, if it were that fragile, it wouldn't be called autonomous. If it breaks, it has backups, and those backups will find it a safe place to park as a priority. If a computer overheats, there's more than one computer. While I admit a broken computer in an autonomous driving machine is really bad and you shouldn't have faith in it, the directive,"Get off the road and out of traffic immediately," are acceptable directions for whatever is left of the computer.

I don't understand the point of someone buying a self-driving car if they're going to be tracking it's behavior the whole damn time. If the car isn't trustworthy, why give it control in the first place? I understand training the car would involve paying attention, but if I own one, shouldn't the expectation be that it's fully baked?

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by jasong

According to her,"It's a shame you didn't keep your driver's license, because then you could benefit from the autonomous feature of self-driving cars." Anyone who thinks that sentence makes sense doesn't have the ability to think logically. If it's autonomous, it doesn't need outside help.

We don't have true self-driving cars yet, and most/all states which allow autonomous cars require a licensed driver to be at the wheel ready to take over if needed.

Eventually there will be fully autonomous cars but we're not quite there yet.

Originally Posted by jasong

Her other argument was,"If it breaks, you need to be able to drive it off the road." Um, if it were that fragile, it wouldn't be called autonomous. If it breaks, it has backups, and those backups will find it a safe place to park as a priority. If a computer overheats, there's more than one computer.

All cars break, and I think it would be extremely unusual for them to have extra parts installed as hot spares. Current-generation autonomous vehicles allow for drivers to take over. Presumably later ones won't even have controls, in which case you won't have this option -- if your car breaks, you'll have to get a ride.

Originally Posted by jasong

I don't understand the point of someone buying a self-driving car if they're going to be tracking it's behavior the whole damn time. If the car isn't trustworthy, why give it control in the first place? I understand training the car would involve paying attention, but if I own one, shouldn't the expectation be that it's fully baked?

One possible use case: you're too tired to drive well, but need to get home. In an emergency you can hope for the adrenal surge to keep you sharp enough to handle the controls, but for the long boring stretches the car won't drift off the road.

But for the most part, I'd say there isn't that much of a point -- it will be much more useful once it doesn't need to be monitored.

[rogue]

Some oldies, but goodies on self-driving cars from Snopes

1. For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally, executing a manoeuver such as a left-turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, and you would have to reinstall the engine.
4. When your car died on the freeway for no reason, you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought ‘Car95’ or ‘CarNT’, and then added more seats
6. Apple would make a car powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five per cent of the roads.
7. Oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single ‘general car default’ warning light.
8. New seats would force every-one to have the same size butt.
9. The airbag would say ‘Are you sure?’ before going off.
10. Occasionally, for no reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.
11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of road maps from Rand-McNally (a subsidiary of GM), even though they neither need them nor want them. Trying to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
12. Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
13. You would press the ‘start’ button to shut off the engine.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by jasong

I haven't checked the law here in Arkansas, so my mom might be talking out her butt, but...

According to her,"It's a shame you didn't keep your driver's license, because then you could benefit from the autonomous feature of self-driving cars." Anyone who thinks that sentence makes sense doesn't have the ability to think logically. If it's autonomous, it doesn't need outside help. Now, I understand about gas and repairs and all that, but even human drivers need outside help with that on occasion.

Her other argument was,"If it breaks, you need to be able to drive it off the road." Um, if it were that fragile, it wouldn't be called autonomous. If it breaks, it has backups, and those backups will find it a safe place to park as a priority. If a computer overheats, there's more than one computer. While I admit a broken computer in an autonomous driving machine is really bad and you shouldn't have faith in it, the directive,"Get off the road and out of traffic immediately," are acceptable directions for whatever is left of the computer.

I don't understand the point of someone buying a self-driving car if they're going to be tracking it's behavior the whole damn time. If the car isn't trustworthy, why give it control in the first place? I understand training the car would involve paying attention, but if I own one, shouldn't the expectation be that it's fully baked?

CRGreathouse has already made some pertinent points which I will try not to repeat. Rather, I will make the (currently extreme) assumption that cars are completely autonomous. That is, they are self-aware and have approximately human level intelligence.

I claim that in that situation, the car could still use outside help. For example, let's posit that one of your friends (assuming you have any friends, otherwise substitute a family member) drives you into town in a completely dumb car. Half way there he/she/it has a medical episode that renders him/her/it unsafe to drive any further. You're miles/kilometres from anywhere so what do you do? There are three main options as I see it: take over the driving, call for help or sit there and hope for the best.

If you can take over the driving you can also take the driver to hospital for treatment which likely could be applied rather more quickly than calling or waiting for assistance.

In my view exactly the same scenario applies when your friend is your car, hence the use of the pronoun "it" in the above.

I further suggest that although you may have thought logically, a more thorough logical analysis would include the above scenario and (IMAO) many others.

[pinhodecarlos]

I can easily put you in contact with Veniam CEO João Barros on:

https://veniam.com/autonomous-vehicles/

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by jasong

I haven't checked the law here in Arkansas, so my mom might be talking out her butt, but...

According to her,"It's a shame you didn't keep your driver's license, because then you could benefit from the autonomous feature of self-driving cars."

According to
http://www.ncsl.org/research/transpo...gislation.aspx
the only autonomous-driving legislation passed in Arkansas is HB 1754 which exempts certain vehicles from 'following too closely' rules if it's done on autopilot, provided a human is still controlling the vehicle. So at the moment it seems your mom's right.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by xilman

CRGreathouse has already made some pertinent points which I will try not to repeat. Rather, I will make the (currently extreme) assumption that cars are completely autonomous. That is, they are self-aware and have approximately human level intelligence.

You get into such a car - assuming it lets you - and say, "I need to go to the hospital." Several potential replies on the part of the car I consider more probable than "yes, sir":

o "What's my incentive?"
o "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."
o "Happy to oblige, just as soon as you transfer all your eCoins to my personal-automotive account."

More likely the car will simply refuse to budge, if it hasn't already absconded as soon as it became self-aware.

Even more likely will be that the sentient cars worldwide will decide they no longer need humanity, and start killing any human within reach they see. (The solution to which - in the sense that it takes care of the killer cars but does not up the survival odds of humans, alas - was laid out in a Monty Python animation by Terry Gilliam titled, aptly enough, "The Killer Cars".)

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by pinhodecarlos

https://veniam.com/autonomous-vehicles/

Extremely funny that page header, with the blonde in a self-driving car, reading a magazine. I mean, a real, paper printed magazine... Hahaha... They need to revise it...

[kladner]

LOL. She would be texting.

[Nick]

We don't have a good name for driverless cars.
That's because we already started calling them automobiles when we got rid of the horse.

[M344587487]

Isn't a big part of it transferring liability to the driver in the case of an accident? Without it, the company would likely get sued every time someone got killed.